Maryland: Ouija Board Headstone

In addition to wide-open prairie, twisting coastal highways, and sun kissed mountain ranges, the United States has its fair share of oddities—really, really odd oddities, as it turns out. What better way to spend a road trip than discovering how bizarre our country (and some of its inhabitants) is?

In the Northeast, road-trippers eager for a peek at the out-of-the-ordinary can check out places ranging from a museum dedicated to the study of yetis, sea serpents, and the like, to a graveyard for Ben and Jerry’s flavors that didn’t work out, to a collection of diseased brains. Things start to get a little weirder towards the Midwest—like a public park filled with exotic concrete totem poles, a giant cow that used to be able to talk about the Wisconsin dairy industry, and a massive mountain containing way more nuclear waste than anybody knew existed. Further west, there is no shortage of strange attractions—large, steel animals, fruit-shaped planted mazes, a very inviting clown-themed motel. Head south, and travelers can catch a glimpse of America’s finest: a giant nut (we’ll let you guess which kind), a bunch of Airstream RVs sticking out of the ground, and even the gates to the voodoo underworld.

Scattered across the 50 states, these strange roadside attractions are a good excuse to get off the beaten path and stretch your legs after hours in the car—or to just get a little taste of weird America.